Great news today from Warner Bros, Constantine director Francis Lawrence has been tapped to direct the film I Am Legend.
Legend is a huge sci-fi project that’s been floating around the studio for nearly a decade, with different directors and actors attached to it. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ridley Scott, Will Smith, and Michael Bay have all at one point been involved in trying to get the Mark Protosevich script to the screen. Finally, after years of stutter starts, it looks like the project is finally going to be a movie. Warner Bros. is determined to put the long-in-waiting adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel on the fast-track.
I read, and even reviewed Protosevich’s script on this website a couple of years ago, and totally fell in love with it. The script is a fantastic blend of genres, mixing vampires with post-apocalyptic fiction in a deeply moving, emotional, dark, disturbing fantasy tale. Set in Los Angeles in the aftermath of a biological war, I Am Legend focuses on a single survivor in a desperate struggle for survival against a world of nocturnal, vicious, blood-lusting mutants called Hemocytes. For more info click here to read my old, suddenly relevant script review.
Variety reports that the film will undergo a few rewrites under the direction of Lawrence before hitting production. He’ll have to work fast though, since they’re eyeing a 2006 start date. Hopefully, he doesn’t change much. The screenplay is perfect as is. What’s nice is that judging from Constantine, Lawrence may actually have the right sensibilities to pull this thing off. It gives me a little more confidence knowing that he’s the guy in charge of the script touchups.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Richard Matheson’s book has been adapted for the screen. You might remember Charlton Heston’s take The Omega Man, and before that Vincent Price did it in The Last Man on Earth. But Protosevich’s script takes that story to an entirely new, more powerful level. Done right, I Am Legend could easily be one of the best films of 2007.
